THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM 85
Governments administered the country but had no responsibility in law. This divorce had a fatal effect on the economy in the finances of the country. As was inevitable extravagance in expenditure had become the rule in practice and it was inherent in the Imperial system itself. Economy is begotten of responsibility, and responsibility is obtained where a government has to find the resources to meet the charges it desires to incur. Prior to the inauguration of the Imperial system the Provincial Government had the obligation to raise money for the charges included in their budgets. Consequently they had to be economical. But under the Imperial system, while the budgets for the various services were prepared by the provincial authorities, the responsibility for finding the ways and means rested on the Government of India. Formerly they knew the limits of the purse they had to draw upon, but under the Imperial system they
“had no means of knowing the measure by which their annual demands upon the Government of India ought to be regulated. They had a purse to draw upon of unlimited because of unknown depth. They saw on every side the necessity for improvements, and their constant and justifiable desire was to obtain for their own provinces as large a share as they could persuade the Government of India to give them out of the general revenues of the Empire. They found by experience that the less economy they practised, and the more importunate their demands, the more likely they were to persuade the Government of India of their requirements. In representing these requirements, they felt that they did what was right, and they left to the Government of India, which had taken upon itself, the responsibility of refusing to provide the necessary means.” [1]
To these extravagant demands the Government of India had often to yield; for, till very late, it did not possess the machinery to appraise the demands and to control the expenditure on them. It is not usual to expect much efficiency from any Imperial system of administration, much less when it covers not a department, not a province, but a country as big as a continent. Merely from being huge it is slow to move. Much slower would it necessarily be if it were a system as unorganized and unconsolidated as the Indian system was. First of all, the Imperial system in India was without
1 The Administration of the Earl of Mayo, as Viceroy and Governor-General of India — a Minute by the Honourable John Strachey, a member of the Council and late acting Governor-General, dated April 30, 1872. Calcutta Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1872, p. 46.